Here to Stay (39 page)

She returned to her routine but stopped after a minute.

“Do you want to try again?” she asked.

“Not now.”

“I meant one day.”

“Yes,” he said. “But not now. Right now I’m taking care of you.”

Elbows on knees, he sat and watched, letting the strains of Chopin fill his chest with a dull melancholy. Letting Daisy fill his eyes with her beauty and her pain.

You are my wife.

He turned his wedding band around and around his finger as his sole purpose rolled cool and solid in his mouth like a piece of ice.

I will stay here. I will watch over you.

I will protect you.

THEY CLEANED UP THE house and sank a little more conviction into the future. Yes, they would try again.

“But take the time to mourn,” the doctors said. And the counselors. And the people they met at support group. They were doing it right this time. Perhaps over-doing it, but both had learned the hard way it was no good toughing it out alone. They went for counseling separately, and together. They read books. They threw information at it.

Grieve and celebrate, the popular opinion seemed to be. Celebrate and grieve. Feel all of it.

The handful of pictures Lucky took in the hospital were beautiful, but one was especially so. Erik lying in the hospital bed with Daisy’s head on his shoulder and Kees on his chest, both their hands cradling him. The gold chain around Kees’s neck and the charms resting on his back. The light was soft. The composition was peaceful and dreamy. The baby looked almost ethereal. Framed in silver, it was lovely. They put it on top of the piano, keeping a lit candle on one side and Vivian’s hummingbird on the other.

They got a special box and put away the lock of hair, the hand and footprints, the hospital bracelet, the baby cap and the swaddling blanket. Daisy added the lab photos of the fertilized eggs and the sonogram pictures. Will came one day to disassemble the crib and put it in the attic. They kept the door to the empty nursery open and wandered in and out as it moved them.

They tried to build it into the matrix. To let it hurt. To lean into it and feel it so they could make it part of them.

It sucked.

The rush of confused, post-partum hormones gave Daisy horrible night sweats. She woke up soaked and shivering, the sheets and the comforter cover sopping wet. Erik laid down beach towels and flipped the duvet over while she changed into dry clothes.

He felt helpless as the loss manifested itself in other cruel ways. The bloodied pads in the bathroom wastepaper basket made him angry. Daisy’s breasts were rock hard and burning. The pain of her milk drying up made her face twist. It shot up into her armpits, throbbing and pulsing. She bound herself into tight sports bras, but sometimes the milk came down anyway, soaking through to her shirt. Or spilling through Erik’s fingers as he cupped those heavy, grieving spheres in his hands.

Leave her alone,
he thought, furious his wife had to bleed and sweat and leak this way, as if she needed a constant reminder of the loss.

Let me take some of this away from her. Give me some of it.

Make it fair.

“It’s so unfair,” Lucky said. She had brought over a pot of chicken soup, pantry provisions and Jack.

Jack put his arms up and Erik hugged him.

“No, pick me up,” Jack said. Erik counted off and swung him onto his chest. Jack wrapped arms and legs around and squeezed. “You need an extra hard hug.”

“And you’re so good at them,” Erik said from under young boy bones and muscle. He stretched out his arms, leaving Jack clinging like a monkey. “Look,” he said to Lucky. “No hands.”

“He’s a clutcher,” Lucky said, smiling. “From day one. Just wanted to be held.”

Erik set Jack down. The boy went upstairs to the bedroom where Daisy was reading. Erik peeked under the pot lid at the soup. It looked delicious but he wasn’t hungry.

“I hate this,” Lucky said, stacking rolls of paper towel under the sink. “I mean honestly. Fucking enough.”

“Is this where I say something about everything happening for a reason?”

She shut the cabinet and got up, the tendons in her knees popping. She crossed her arms and looked at Erik. “We never talked about it, did we? You and I.”

He shook his head. He hardly ever thought back to the night Lucky miscarried at Jay Street. When he walked through the drips of blood on the bathroom floor. Crouched down shivering to gather Lucky up in his arms, pull her into the safety of his embrace and get her to let go of what was already lost.

Lucky reached to fiddle with the collar of Erik’s shirt. “Will always said, ‘If you can’t find me, get Fish.’ And that night… If he couldn’t be there immediately, I can’t imagine anyone else but you coming to the rescue.”

“I didn’t do…” He let the words go. They weren’t true. And this wasn’t about him. He opened his arms and she hugged him tight.

“Thank you,” she whispered. As if it had happened yesterday. “And if you ever can’t find Dais, you get me.”

He let his forehead sink onto her shoulder. His body trembled with a weary sadness.

The four of us need each other.

We’re not weird. We’re nothing but typical.

“You’re tired,” Lucky said. “Go rest. Send Jack down.”

Erik went up and peeked politely through his own bedroom door. Daisy was asleep. Jack sat up against a wall of pillows, looking at the pictures in Erik’s book of Swedish folk tales. Feet making twin hills in the quilt. His expression serious as he turned the pages.

“Taking care of my girl?” Erik said as he went in.

Jack closed the book and put it down on the nightstand. Swung his feet to the floor and got up.

“I made your side warm,” he said. “I’m good at that, too.”

His arms went around Erik’s waist, squeezed once. Then he slipped like smoke out the door.

He moved as noiselessly as Will.

UNDER CANADIAN LAW, a child born after twenty weeks gestation—alive or dead—guaranteed full parental leave. Both the Fredericton Playhouse and New Brunswick Ballet threw compassionate leave on top, giving the Fiskares fifteen weeks to grieve.

“Get out of here,” Will said to them. “Just go somewhere. Go around the world. Fuck it.”

They didn’t want to go anywhere. They stayed put, wandering around their life, getting through the structureless days. Picking things up and putting them down again. Eventually, cabin fever settled in, and they headed outside in an orgy of yardwork. Dawn to dusk they labored, cleaning up the world with a feverish energy. The lawn and garden beds were immaculate, the garage sparkled and the shed boasted a new paint job. Out of chores, they began walking long miles together: loops around the lake and treks through the woods. On stronger days, they drove to parts of the Trans Canada Trail. They tramped and trudged along the pathway, not to enjoy the scenery, but to wear themselves out.

Erik kept hypervigilant eyes on his wife’s skin. “Promise me,” he said. “If you start thinking about glass, start even entertaining the idea of hurting yourself, you tell me.”

“I promised to stay alive for you,” she said. “A long time ago.”

“Promise this for me now.”

“I promise,” she said. “It hasn’t entered my mind. It’s not who I am anymore.”

“All right,” he said. “But if you feel like you’re spiraling down into the dark, you’re going on the meds. It’s not even a question.”

She touched his face. “I know.”

“I mean it,” he said, his voice shaking. “Your mental state is more important to me than anything else. Don’t tough it out, Dais.”

“I don’t have the strength to tough it out,” she said, a tiny, sad smile trembling beneath her damp eyes. The green was gone from their depths. She was a woman at war.

Erik felt battle-weary and defeated. He hadn’t cried since Kees’s ashes came back to them. He walked around with a constant lump in his throat, but the tears wouldn’t come. Woven in with his stopped-up grief was an enraged fury and the occasional, twisted urge to either trash his workbench or kick a small animal to death.

He found himself frequently visiting his bedside table drawer, taking out the leather case with his Purple Heart, peeking beneath the inset where a flattened copper penny lived. Fighting a strange urge to put it in his pocket.

He passed long stretches of time gazing at the coin, remembering the power it held over him for so many years. He looked the compulsion in the eye. Acknowledged and felt his way through the need as he peeled his fingers off it.

It wasn’t your fault.

It wasn’t wood un-knocked, it wasn’t superstition ignored, it wasn’t you flaunting your happiness and inviting James to come back and shoot it down.

It was nothing you did or didn’t do.

It’s something that happened to you.

He kept waiting to either cry or erupt. Anything to break the stalemate. Grief was an iron collar. Anger was barbed wire in his guts.

It hurt like hell.

He wondered if he was dying.

“Can you die from not crying?” he asked.

“I’m tired of crying,” Daisy said through her clenched teeth, her forehead against the window pane. Outside was torrential wind and rain. “I’m so fucking angry. I want to smash something. I want to kill something. It’s not fair.”